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[–]Elkaybay 169 points170 points  (62 children)

Using ElevenLabs, it's super easy to clone his voice or for example, David Attenborough. No one will ever be able to protect his own voice once he uses it in public.

[–]FaceDeer 154 points155 points  (27 children)

In case you were picking that name at random and weren't aware of this actual example, here's a Youtube channel that's nothing but David Attenborough narrating documentaries about Warhammer 40k.

The Machine is immortal.

[–]StaticNocturne▪️ASI 2022[🍰] 52 points53 points  (24 children)

I wonder why it's not making bigger waves? None of my friends into AI had heard of it and when I told them about it they didn't seem as impressed as I thought. To me it's perhaps the most significant facet of the whole AI Cambrian explosion this year

[–]AI_is_the_rake 51 points52 points  (18 children)

People don’t understand how difficult of a problem it is. To most people it’s all magic anyway. Once the technology is here the reaction is “meh”.

[–]MoNastri 34 points35 points  (10 children)

To most people it’s all magic anyway. Once the technology is here the reaction is “meh”.

This reaction always disappoints me when I share these advances with my friends. I should learn to expect it by now.

[–]AdaptivePerfection 7 points8 points  (0 children)

To most people, it’s magic that happens because obviously AI is smart.

To people who study AI, they see the tech breakthrough for what it is, know where the tech has come from and struggled for a long time to do, and so it’s much more impactful to see it happen.

Now, I think it’ll really sink in once it starts taking their jobs. Everyone will collectively be mind-blown then.

[–]StaticNocturne▪️ASI 2022[🍰] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It brings to mind the frog in the boiling pot parable (hopefully inaccurate)

[–]SomeDust5349 -3 points-2 points  (7 children)

Out of curiosity, what reaction would be ideal?

Most people, once they know about it, actually don't like the implications of these developments. The loss of jobs. The fact that it's becoming impossible to parse reality with deep fake everything, and the government departments policing fake news are inevitably bad faith. Because you guys have been sold on the singularity lie, you're all for it.

The internet is becoming catastrophically disruptive and dangerous. We've integrated our vital infrastructure with this thing. It was a stupid thing to do 20 years ago and recent AI developments have just made it 1000x more dangerous.

They're going to have to shut down the internet. We're just awaiting an AI related catastrophe sufficient to spark it. It's not going to be great in the direct aftermath, but in the long run it'll be for the best.

[–]ProgrammersAreSexy 16 points17 points  (3 children)

They're going to have to shut down the internet

Yeah... That's not going to happen. Cyber-security is a never ending cat and mouse game where the attackers come up with new attacks and the defenders come up with new defenses. Rinse, repeat.

Attackers will integrate AI into their attacks, defenders will integrate AI into their defenses. As always, there will be some damage along the way in the small windows where the defenders don't have protection for a new attack vector, but I don't think it will be anything catastrophic.

[–]Legitimate_Tax_5992 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The problem is, the attackers always have to go first...

[–]zeezero 8 points9 points  (2 children)

The internet isn't a single thing you can shut down.

[–]Legitimate_Tax_5992 2 points3 points  (1 child)

And therein lies the problem...

[–]skinnnnner 5 points6 points  (0 children)

How is that a problem? It would be a giant problem if it was possible to just shut the internet down.

[–]Tyler_Zoro 12 points13 points  (4 children)

To most people it’s all magic anyway.

To be fair, to most people working in the AI field, it's magic. Or, to be more precise, it's technology that is so complex that it can't be understood in traditional terms. Data goes in, an unfathomably complex tool that plumbs the depths of a hyper-dimensional space emerges, and somehow that tool can do useful work.

We understand all of the parts, but what's actually going on is currently beyond our understanding. For a somewhat trippy, horror-themed look at the internals, see Non-Euclidean Therapy for AI Trauma. While it's obviously fiction, it's also exploring the mind-bending complexities of the UNET convolutional neural network architecture.

[–]AI_is_the_rake 2 points3 points  (3 children)

Yes absolutely. But when you think about it that’s how all tech works. When we run fiber optic cable or use semiconductor chips we rely on the underlying physical properties which we just take advantage of without understanding how it works.

Engineering is taking things we know and building the things we need. We know copper conducts electricity and LLM create models of language data. AI and brains create models of arbitrary data in which we can use to build interesting applications.

[–]Tyler_Zoro 0 points1 point  (2 children)

You're right when it comes to the physical world. You can't rigorously prove what's going on in a physical system because we don't actually know the physical properties of the smallest granularity of the universe (or even if the universe has a "smallest granularity," though the Planck length appears to be just that.)

But when it comes to mathematics, because we can rigorously prove what systems are doing, we are used to that meaning that we also understand the causality of those systems. But when the complexity ramps up sufficiently that becomes impractical and ultimately impossible.

I think we always intuitively expected that such complexity would yield emergent phenomena that would have applications unique to their properties, but AI is one of the few areas that we've seen hard evidence of that.

[–]AI_is_the_rake 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s a good point and important distinction. These LLMs are not doing anything special. The computations are deterministic and yet they yield novel properties unexpected in regular silicon.

I believe these LLMs are doing something similar to how data compression works. With compression we notice residencies in messages which can be removed without losing any information while the message length is shorter. Images file sizes can be removed by allowing some of the information to be removed because, while the information is not technically redundant the overall meaning of the image is not compromised when similar enough pixels are made to be identical thus allowing loss compression. Some data is lost but the over all image meaning is retained.

I suspect that the LLMs are doing something similar here. The meaning of the overall message is retained while the large volume of training data is not required to be retained in order to produce the same meaningful messages.

In other words, it compresses based on “meaning”. And humans are the arbiters of what is considered meaningful. Which is why openAI’s chatgpt feedback mechanism whereby users trained the output was an important step in training the model on what humans wanted to see.

[–]__ingeniare__ 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I think people who are not into tech usually have a very poorly calibrated sense of what currently is and isn't feasible to do with technology.

[–]ptitrainvaloin 3 points4 points  (0 children)

People:

  1. It's impossible!!!
  2. This is like magic!!
  3. OMG!
  4. meh

[–]Hunterdivision▪️[🍰] 6 points7 points  (1 child)

I don’t think a lot of people realize the power of AI or somehow disregard it because it’s “early.” and they don’t hear about “cloning” or something else everyday, especially if they’re not interested in it. I believe that sure while AI could be used for nefarious purposes, I also think that it could be used for so many good things in the world too. And to add that there’s some people who more so fear AI or are just unimpressed rather than embrace it, because they’re not aware of its capabilities and how it could improve so many things in the world we know now.

[–]OrangeCreamSherbet 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Happy cake day!

[–]boostwtf 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Agreed.

It's even bigger than deepfake videos, arguably.

[–]inferno46n2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Your friends are obviously not very into AI then…. This tech is a year old

[–]malcolmrey 3 points4 points  (0 children)

if you want to impress them, we could make a model of them :)

i'm more of an image kind of guy (even though i've dabbled into audio AI as well)

most of my friends know about the AI since I was spamming them with my generations since SD came out

some are pretty confident and say that they know how to spot the generated images

we made a bet, i sent them 10 images and asked them to tell me which 3 of those 10 are real and which ones are generated.

they were all pretty confident, they picked 3 images and i congratulated them

of course - i generated all 10 using the AI, but i didn't want to make them sad, since they were so confident :)

[–]Hungry_Prior940 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thanks, listening now.

[–]boostwtf 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Damn, that's good.

[–]Prince_Noodletocks 12 points13 points  (0 children)

I prefer RVC and TorToiSe models since I don't like companies snooping around but yeah, the tech is really accessible now.

[–]Creepy-Tie-4775 8 points9 points  (11 children)

Recorded a lot of voice-acted dialog from Baldur's Gate 3 and cloned a couple of the characters' voices using ElevenLabs.

Then I typed out a transcript of those lines as example dialog, along with a bunch of game/world info, into my home hosted AI, running a Llama2 LLM and TTS linked to ElevenLabs.

Now I can I voice chat with Shadowheart.

[–]EvilDogAndPonyShow 0 points1 point  (8 children)

Can you outline how to set something like that up please? Sounds very interesting

[–]Creepy-Tie-4775 8 points9 points  (7 children)

It's a bit complicated for a full outline, but there are a few key points:

  1. ElevenLabs.com, as mentioned above, will let you clone a voice using AI with just a minute or two of clean audio. Using audio you don't own is against their terms of service, so it's definitely not recommended, but possible.

  2. I use KoboldAI (which you can find more on at r/KoboldAI) to host my own AI chatbot on my local hardware (a beefy system is required, mainly a large GPU with as much VRAM as possible. I'm using a GTX 4080)

  3. In KoboldAI, I downloaded and loaded an LLM based on llama2, Meta's AI that got leaked a while ago. This is the AI language model that interprets your text inputs and generates responses.

  4. To communicate with the LLM running in KoboldAI, I use SillyTavern, which is just a chatroom style interface, but includes character editing and management as well as add-ons like options for speech to text and text to speech, including linking to ElevenLabs through their API. (More info at r/SillyTavernAI)

  5. To create a 'character', you simply enter text describing that character's personality and any other information you want then to know or information about the scenario you want it to simulate, creating its 'memories'.

What happens from there is, whenever you send a message to the AI, SillyTavern sends the AI your message, plus all the text you put in its memory, as well as the recent text from your conversation.

The AI takes all of this data and combines it together, using context and a little bit of randomness to generate a response which it thinks would be the most logical reply based on the previous text.

Given the right settings and detailed description of the character you want to create, the AI can do an amazing job simulating a conversation or roleplaying session with that character.

It's a VERY deep rabbit hole to go down and this is just a very basic explanation of how AI chatbots work in general.

Everything listed above is free and open source, with the exception of ElevenLabs, which you need a subscription to to be able to access through their API, but can play with for free.

[–]EvilDogAndPonyShow 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Freaking awesome, thanks for taking the time to reply!!

[–]Creepy-Tie-4775 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No problem. If you decide to dig into things, there is a ton of useful information on those subs as well as their Discords. It was enough for me to stumble my way through the installation and learn as I go.

[–]Sad_Translator35 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

maybe you should work for that company and make this a standard thing in future games?

[–]DigitalSea- 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Could someone take an author and create an accurate AI based on their life works and biographies, etc? Imagine chatting with a Charles Darwin AI, or morbidly, a Hitler AI…

[–]Creepy-Tie-4775 0 points1 point  (2 children)

There are sites out there where people share their bots, which are really just a few paragraphs of text, and yes, people have done this with just about every character or person you can imagine.

Hard to say how accurate the responses really are, but some are pretty convincing. I've seen Hitler bits where you meet him in college and can argue philosophy, where you capture him during the war and can torture him, or where you can befriend him and help.

Think of it like a creative writing tool. You essentially write the first page of the story in whatever style or scenario you want, then the AI takes it and runs with it.

[–]Legitimate_Tax_5992 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Can you make your Google Home or Bixby use this technology?

[–]Creepy-Tie-4775 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm sure it's possible at this point, those systems are pretty open to hacking/customization and ElevenLabs has a pretty robust API, plus there are a lot of open source alternatives.

I eventually plan to make my own AI assistant from 'scratch' that runs locally and interfaces with some home automation projects and another program that will give me a realistic 3D avatar for it.

Almost anything is possible at this point if you know what you are doing (or how to borrow and modify code written by people who DO know what they are doing). I'm very much a hobbyist though.

[–]GrizzlySin24 2 points3 points  (12 children)

That depends where you live. Here in Germany your voice and picture are considered your personal data. If an AI company used them without you consent you can just sue them. And if you win they probably have to delete all the data they have from you and make your voice unavailable.

Just why is it so hard for AI companies to just ask people for their consent. Sorry but the internet isn’t your free personal Database

[–]FpRhGf 2 points3 points  (1 child)

AI companies aren't the ones cloning people's voices without their consent. It's the people who use these AI tools.

[–]Creepy-Tie-4775 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Exactly, and while the best sites/companies for this have very strict terms of service regarding using data you don't own, there are already open source models out there for generating these cloned voices on your own hardware where nobody is going to be able to stop you.

Just like AI image generators and AI chatbots are already 'out in the wild' in open source projects. The cat is well out of the bag at this point.

[–]DaRealMVP2024 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Germany won’t be able to do shit if a guy in Laos replicates your voice via an AI tool.

[–]3_Thumbs_Up 3 points4 points  (4 children)

So then it's just a matter of time before voice actors get completely side tracked, and books and cartoons will be voiced by AI actors with their own voice. The cost of voice acting is going to 0.

[–]GrizzlySin24 3 points4 points  (3 children)

That’s the next question, who owned the voice and the performance. The actor or the company that contracted him? I don’t want to be in the skin of the politicians that have to decide that.

[–]3_Thumbs_Up 9 points10 points  (2 children)

That's my point though. If voice actors try to put up high legal barriers to use their voice, companies will just start using voices that don't belong to anyone. At tjat point it doesn't matter who owns the voice of the voice actor, because their voice won't be used.

[–]Legitimate_Tax_5992 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Voices and faces can just be generated at this point, once a few movies or cartoons are created that become popular, but which don't employ any actors, the game for them will be over...

[–]Anxious_Blacksmith88 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If voice acting/video generation is free, why do we need companies at all?

[–]skinnnnner 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Germany does not even have google street view. Germay still uses fax. Their goverment did not have the technology to send it's citizens money during Covid. It's basically a 3rd world country from a tech standpoint. A huge outlier. Almost no other country has these problems. Germanys privacy laws are absolutely ridiculous. There is a reason no innovation is coming from that country anymore, and 40% of Uni graduates are leaving the country.

[–]GrizzlySin24 0 points1 point  (2 children)

  1. it has
  2. Yes is sadly does, can’t really deny that.
  3. it has and did it

[–]skinnnnner -1 points0 points  (1 child)

https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/germany-street-view/

Like North Korea.

https://www.focus.de/finanzen/news/entlastungspaket-warum-der-deutsche-staat-den-buergern-kein-geld-ueberweisen-kann_id_160484172.html

Lunatic bureaucracy

[–]GrizzlySin24 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

If you read the artical it does a good job of explaining why it was that way roughly 15 years ago. They updated it this year and nobody bat and eye about it.

I never said it was done in an easy way. This isn’t the US where they just send checks to the poorest

[–]catchingimmortality 1 point2 points  (0 children)

ElevenLabs can’t get Aussie accents right yet when cloning, so at least some actors are safe for now.

But AI technology is getting more advanced by the day, & I really hope it gets put towards accelerating scientific endeavours, instead of producing too many deepfakes.

[–]tomatomic -1 points0 points  (4 children)

This is still theft. Just as midhourney is - it didn’t learn to paint it just learned from other peoples work on the internet without license.

If it’s not illegal to use someone’s voice in AI, it should be and probably will be. Same with midjourney, which, legally, cannot me trademarked due to the fact that human authorship is required.

So any AI art that has sourced from other artists is impossible to trademark, and leaves it open for the public to reuse at any time.

[–]Elkaybay 1 point2 points  (3 children)

Isn't it a bit of a grey zone? A real artist will also have looked at other art pieces, and influences can often be identified in someone's art work.

[–]Anxious_Blacksmith88 0 points1 point  (2 children)

It's not really a grey zone. There is a difference between a human learning and a company creating a commercial product.

[–]Elkaybay 0 points1 point  (1 child)

True, and is it easy to prove or track how/what work did the AI inspire itself from ?

[–]YahYahY 0 points1 point  (0 children)

whew, thank god everyone that uses she and they pronouns are safe

[–]Zombie_F00d 237 points238 points  (6 children)

The most concerning thing are the agents who “had no idea this was possible”. Find new agents.

[–]TheNewGildedAge 19 points20 points  (0 children)

I have a feeling we're gonna see a whole lot more of that, from a lot of people in powerful positions.

[–]loversama 28 points29 points  (3 children)

Well to be honest when he voiced for the audio books like 8+ years ago it wasn’t possible so they had no reason to negotiate or account for your voice being “stolen”

[–]MrFixIt252 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I remember back when doing electronic voices was being done with vocaloid.

Now it’s hit mainstream.

[–]raleighs 22 points23 points  (0 children)

Example here: https://youtu.be/JgkjgUvXzpU

[–]OrangeYaGlad4 13 points14 points  (5 children)

Well, copyright lawyers got into the right profession! I bet were are going to see a LOT more copyright lawsuits over the next few years then we have in the past 5, combined as AI gets more mainstream.

[–]imnos 2 points3 points  (2 children)

I'm interested to know what percentage similarity a voice has to be before it's subject to copyright?

People will find a way around this. Modify the voice just enough to avoid copyright and hey presto.

[–]inspectorgadget9999 2 points3 points  (1 child)

I was thinking that. Surely, you couldn't just make a documentary 'narrated by' Stephen Fry or even Ftephen Sry without running into copyright issues?

But then, did Tom Tom ever get sued for those annoying 'celebrity' voices

[–]AdditionalSuccotash 1 point2 points  (0 children)

At some point you will be able to generate new voices based on a description. Instead of copying Stephen Fry you can just tell the model you want the voice to be a "distinguished elderly English man with a posh accent, gentle tone, and medium register." No reason to include the specific actor if it will just cause copyright issues apart from name recognition. But future generations may not care about that aspect of media as much as we do today

[–]m77je 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Copyright protects an original work of authorship.

Such as if the infringer made copies of Fry’s audiobook recordings.

But has the AI copied an original work? Or made something new?

[–]CodeMonkeyInVan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

uhhh. copyright lawyers can easily be replaced by AI within 5 years.

[–]Kintor01 143 points144 points  (38 children)

Ingenious solution using audiobooks for training data. It's almost perfect. Huge amounts of data with the actor speaking, in a variety tones and emotions, mostly isolated from music or other sounds. All readily available on cloud platforms like Amazon's Audible.

There's clearly no putting this genie back in the bottle. Although I imagine a major actor like Stephen Fry will always be able to find work. He could even licence the rights to his voice for official AI reproductions. As for the rest, he's got no more chance of stopping random YouTubers then if he was only going up against human voice impersonators.

[–]Concheria 62 points63 points  (1 child)

These days you can make an AI voice clone with like 10 seconds of audio. It's likely Stephen Fry saw one of the many versions of his voice going around and got spooked. I can see a lot of actors who are not savvy seeing that and freaking out, and it doesn't help that no one seems to know what AI is and what isn't.

[–]paint-roller 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Buy an audiobook for $20. Find about a minute worth of audio where you l8ke the narrrators inflection. Pay $20 to eleven labs and you get about 2 hours of narration. This is even cheaper than using fiver for voice over work.

[–]Gratitude15 27 points28 points  (0 children)

Don't even need real people. Get whatever you find pleasing - 70 year old Irishman who smoked all his life reading to me please...

[–]Humble_Personality73 8 points9 points  (2 children)

Can't ai just get their voices from the movies they make or from the president when he makes a speech 🤷. Every major official in the world gives long, drawn-out speeches with usually no other background sound. In a couple of years, it's going to be impossible to tell what's fake and what's real. Things could get really dangerous.

[–]mudman13 2 points3 points  (1 child)

You certainly can yes. There are spoofs/deepfakes of politicians around now . Most have the ethics to state they are AI.

[–]malcolmrey 4 points5 points  (0 children)

not in poland :)

both main parties already did AI spoofs of the other party (terrible job imho, compared to what my friend does with voice AI) and there were no disclaimers

only when it came out (which was right away) and made it to press - then they confirmed it was AI parody

[–]esuil 33 points34 points  (17 children)

this genie back in the bottle

What those actors are not realizing yet in their self-righteous "we have to protect our voices with copyright and stuff" crusade, is what this actually mean for voice and acting in general.

Right now people are replicating famous people because they are famous and training data is available.

But the real thing will come when completely random voices or voices of people who are not know or famous at all are used.

Why pay millions to some famous actor who can do their famous voice acting... When you can pay $100 to some no-name from the streets for their voice instead who got voice that is close enough to what you need. You just need a voice. Actual acting and skill? AI will do that soon enough.

And with their fight against this, main results they will get is losing MORE of their jobs. If they win their legal BS and force anyone to pay them fees to use them... What will happen is not people paying them, but the opposite - people going for cheaper alternatives. While if they did not win that, and their voices where still used, that would naturally result in their relevance keeping up.

But the real losers of this self-righteous crusades are NEW generation of actors. If currently famous ones win the legal precedents, the famous ones will secure THEIR fees and royalties. But they will also "lock-in" the industry - because no one will be using non-famous actors for anything new anymore - they will use AI voices with no strings attached instead.

Why create a product that will make some new budding actor famous and have to pay them more and more fees later... When you can create product with an AI and make an AI voice famous - which you have full rights and control over.

Hollywood actors are so self-centered and selfish, that they are going to kill their own industry with greed.

[–]NanditoPapa 9 points10 points  (4 children)

"Why pay millions to some famous actor who can do their famous voice acting..."

For the same reason they do it now. Because the famous person drives sales.

[–]smackson 11 points12 points  (1 child)

This is what I was gonna say, but OC is right, at the end, about the other 98%: working but not famous actors. Toast.

[–]NanditoPapa 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Agreed. Probably going to hit small time voice actors for video games or minor audio books. OR, an opportunity for people to copyright and license out their voice at scale for more money 🤷🏼‍♂️

[–]yaosio 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Create a famous AI person to drive sales.

[–]NanditoPapa 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes! Do it! Probably will happen eventually.

[–]Voyager_AU 7 points8 points  (0 children)

It reminds me of vocoloids. They have a hug fanbase, and they are computer voices.

[–]count_zero11 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Even worse, new actors are giving away rights to their assets before the even make it to “famous”. They’re already body scanning extras in Hollywood, there won’t be any “actors” in a generation.

[–]Longjumping-Pin-7186 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Why pay millions to some famous actor who can do their famous voice acting... When you can pay $100 to some no-name from the streets for their voice instead who got voice that is close enough to what you need. You just need a voice. Actual acting and skill? AI will do that soon enough.

AI will eventually be able to generate random voices per your specification, just like it can impersonate various writers (texts) or artists (images). Not copyrightable either.

[–]mailslot 0 points1 point  (7 children)

I don’t think it’s greed to want to protect your own likeness & image or to demand to have a say where it’s used.

AI can’t be famous. Fans can’t obsess over an AI on TMZ. You can’t ever see an AI in person, watching a court side basketball game, going to events, or relaxing on vacation. An AI can’t show off their home in the Hollywood hills. People won’t watch a film solely because their favorite AI “actor” is in it.

[–]esuil 0 points1 point  (6 children)

Fans can’t obsess over an AI on TMZ. You can’t ever see an AI in person, watching a court side basketball game, going to events, or relaxing on vacation

None of those things are what makes actors famous - it is their roles and characters in movies and media.

You are mistaking some minority of obsessed nutcases with real reasons some actors have influence.

Robert Downey Jr. is not famous because people follow his life, see him around or check out where he vacations. What is famous are the characters he played - like Iron Man. Most of the people who like him don't even know his name - he is just an Iron Man for them.

People won’t watch a film solely because their favorite AI “actor” is in it.

That is exactly why people watch films with some actors in them. They watch it because they know that performance of that actor will be great, not because they care about what that actor does in their free time.

So again, you mistake some minority nutcases who get obsessions with 95% of the the audience, who won't even be able to remember the names of the actors they liked in the movies - they remember characters, voices, performance, stories.

AI can’t be famous.

Just like fictional characters can't? Like Mikey Mouse, Winney the Pooh, Avatar, Lara Croft, Tom and Jerry, Rick and Morty, South Park, Batman, Spider Man, Harry Potter?

How many people do you think know the names of the actors who played Harry Potter, Batman, Gandalf? The characters make those people famous, and the performance that left the mark in memories of people. Not the humans behind those characters.

[–]mailslot 0 points1 point  (5 children)

I don’t know. I feel like every story of Keanu Reeves being a genuinely nice guy has driven ticket sales, where as Ezra Miller’s troubles dampened sales.

Fame isn’t just about good acting & roles. Look at Ronald Regan or Donald Trump. Their on screen personas jettisoned their political careers. It wasn’t because of their Oscar worthy performances or memorable roles.

People may not intentionally choose to see the next film with Channing Tatum… actually they do because he’s real and attractive and people fantasize about him.

[–]esuil 0 points1 point  (4 children)

I don’t know. I feel like every story of Keanu Reeves being a genuinely nice guy has driven ticket sales, where as Ezra Miller’s troubles dampened sales.

That will just get replaced by stories of people behind the fictional characters. Instead of actor being "nice guy", it will be "team of nice people behind the character". And those people can be fluid, with ever changing flow of people in and out. Brands and companies can also have fame.

Fame isn’t just about good acting & roles.

That is right. And it is also not about just being a human.

It is not about WHO or WHAT it is. It is about MARK AND INFLUENCE it left on the people. And that is not exclusive to real people.

Pixar is not a person. Most fans have no knowledge of people in it or their names. But if Pixar movie or animation appears in theaters, people will watch it. Because Pixar is famous, despite not being a person.

Your arguments are why people are confused and Hollywood actors might be killing their own jobs - because many are confused about real essence of things, focused on self-centered world views of circle jerking around their persona. And newer actors are focused on dream about becoming one of those famous actors and fame and blinded by those dreams of fame to become irrational.

There might be 1%-5% of actors who might benefit from irrational rage and actions aimed at the AI. But majority of the actors who got emotionally manipulated into it will not benefit from it at all - 95% will become victims of the wrong actions and program, and then they will be manipulated again to continue hate on AI tech instead of 1%-5% who sold them out to save their own profits and fame.

[–]TAfzFlpE7aDk97xLIGfs 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Audiobooks are a great source of training date but the results usually aren’t great for conversational tone. People speak differently when they read than when they talk to other people. It makes for some interesting results sometimes.

[–]StackOwOFlow 3 points4 points  (3 children)

he's got no more chance of stopping random YouTubers

I'd imagine DMCA takedowns have a pretty good chance

[–]Prince_Noodletocks 8 points9 points  (2 children)

If they advertise it as his voice yeah. You don't actually have a copyright over what your voice sounds like, since a lot of people in the world sound similar.

[–]StackOwOFlow 0 points1 point  (1 child)

generally they will use keywords that include the source name. and DMCA takedowns tend to be biased in favor of the person filing the complaint

[–]Creepy-Tie-4775 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think whatnhe is getting at is, if you don't claim the voice belongs to a celebrity or try to pass it off as the celebrity, it's the same as a person doing an impression of that celebrity.

Everyone may recognize the voice you are using SOUNDS like that person, but there really isn't any way to prove that it was cloned using their voice, or even that it's supposed to sound like them unless you mention the name or use it in a context that would imply that its them.

[–]ur_lil_vulture_bee 2 points3 points  (2 children)

He could even licence the rights to his voice for official AI reproductions.

The most realiistic endgame of all this: works that use AI won't be copyrightable (and therefore not profitable), and union actors not allowing AI reproductions in solidarity with one another. So don't count your genies being out of the bottle before they've even left the bottle, or something to that effect.

[–]ContributionMoist131 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Sweet all content is now free if AI did it

[–]ContributionMoist131 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interesting what if I use AI to help write music but then it is human performance and recording. Who's is it?

[–]Prince_Noodletocks 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You don't need that much training data anyway. I've trained RVC models on 5 minutes and less

[–]az226 1 point2 points  (0 children)

And it’s all available for free with the transcript, 60,000 hours in several languages courtesy of Facebook.

[–]aleqqqs 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ingenious solution using audiobooks for training data. It's almost perfect. Huge amounts of data with the actor speaking, in a variety tones and emotions, mostly isolated from music or other sounds. All readily available on cloud platforms like Amazon's Audible

Plus, you got a perfect transcript of it

[–]Hungry_Prior940 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, audio books are a great source.

[–]EdGG -1 points0 points  (0 children)

That licensing should be the business case moving forward.

[–]madnoq 19 points20 points  (3 children)

we’ll have attenborough-narrated docs until the sun eats us, won’t we.

[–]clamuu 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Well that sounds quite appealing tbf. Warhammer isn't my thing but definitely up for some Attenborough narrated docs about electronic music.

[–]madnoq 6 points7 points  (0 children)

oh damn, i can hear it♥️ “not content with simply looping an 8bar loop, the ressourceful producer has procured some new technology to splice and re-edit a rhythm. the resulting beats are so sick, that when played at AWOL at 3AM a few days later, the raucous crowd instantly demands a rewind. this is truly bloodclaart jungle tekno”

[–]sirnumbskull 1 point2 points  (0 children)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6Ljn5sTfdk

from a comment above. I'm stunned by how close it is. It's not EXACTLY Attenborough, but it's so close it's spooky.

[–]ninjasaid13▪️[🍰] 21 points22 points  (1 child)

no relation to Philip J. Fry.

[–]Eidon4 8 points9 points  (0 children)

To shreds you say?

[–]cmeerdog 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Everyone and everything is a part of AI. Anyone complaining just has main character syndrome.

[–]shimapanlover 18 points19 points  (20 children)

Voices can sound the same - it's weird to copyright a voice when somebody sounds like you or can imitate you. That's their voice as well or their ability to sound like someone.

Copyrighting a voice shouldn't be a thing.

[–]jonesocnosis 6 points7 points  (4 children)

If Tom Cruise had an identical twin, could the twin allow Hollywood to CGI / deep fake his face?

Like the real Tom Cruise in that example wouldnt own his likeness, so he wouldnt be able to do anything about it.

[–]shimapanlover 4 points5 points  (2 children)

Sure - why not? He has as much right to his likeness as Tom Cruise has to his.

Just because someone is popular and has more money, doesn't give him more rights.

[–]qrayons 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Just because someone is popular and has more money, doesn't give him more rights.

I mean, in theory...

[–]shimapanlover 2 points3 points  (0 children)

yea well, in a perfect world.

[–]Deciheximal144 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think a big factor in sales is having the name on the cover. I can see people grabbing the DVD case. and going "Hey! I didn't know about... oh wait. Who's Todd Bruise?" And then tossing the item back.

[–]kkpappas 1 point2 points  (11 children)

A photo you took can be the same as someone else’s, that doesn’t mean photos shouldn’t be copyrightable

[–]shimapanlover 4 points5 points  (5 children)

A photography is different to something you can't do anything about like your voice. Where you have to live a life where a big corporation can and will sue you through automatic detection if you ever decide to do some public speaking, for example making YouTube videos.

Having to proof your voice is yours is dystopian. It's something that you are. While taking a picture and proving that it is yours, is by far, by faaaar not as soul crushing as being struck by copyright claims for talking.

[–]kkpappas -2 points-1 points  (1 child)

That is a very absurd example you gave. Usually the copyrights do the bare minimum. In this case the copyrights would extent just to AI, since it’s the only reason we have an issue in the first place.

[–]shimapanlover 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That is a very absurd example you gave.

You gave the example - I gave you the consequences which I haven't heard an argument against.

In this case the copyrights would extent just to AI

Copyright claims are made by AI used by Corporations. The last thing they will care about is hitting the right person, they will make the voice scanning as broad as humanly possible to copyright strike as many people as possible. I'm not making something up - This happens now to videos and this will happen to voices as well when they get copyright.

[–]Deciheximal144 0 points1 point  (2 children)

So what happens when there's so much photography out there that an AI can just search through a vast database of photos and pull out one that is so strikingly similar to yours that yours could qualify as copyright infringement? You're not going to have so much incentive to push your own copyright claim then.

[–]shimapanlover 0 points1 point  (1 child)

The current image generators don't search from databases, they write what they figured out (some say learned, some don't like learned) from billions of pictures into a mathematical matrix with thousands, hundreds of thousand or even millions of dimensions, most information is lost by that process since hundreds of Terra-byte of data ends up as a 2 gigabyte file that can be used offline if you wish to.

In the event that something comes out similar to something already existing, even if it wasn't in the database, it could be a copyright violation though. I mean, let's assume I never watched TV or knew Disney, I could come up with Mickey Mouse completely independent from ever having watched something from Disney, I still wouldn't be granted any rights over it if I try to register it since it already has been registered.

That's why voice copyright should never be a thing. It's something like the V-sign or a facial expression. You shouldn't be able to own something that is human to the core.

[–]Deciheximal144 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No disagreement with your second and third paragraphs, but I only mentioned AI as it may be the best way to search through vast databases of photographs to find a similar image to a new photograph someone wants to try to enforce the copyright on. Conventional software could do that too.

[–]Creepy-Tie-4775 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I agree. You can copyright a likeness, but if the person using a clone of your voice doesn't claim, implicitly through context or explicitly titles and tags, that the voice is supposed to be yours, it's hard to prove it was actually cloned using your voice.

Obviously it gets more actionable if/when someone tries to claim YOU actually did a voiceover or narration, but if someone makes a YouTube video using a voice that just happens to sound like yours and doesn't attempt to deceive anyone into thinking it IS yours, I don't think much can be done anyway.

[–]shimapanlover 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yea - Impersonation is absolutely not okay, agreed.

I'm just saying against copyrighting voices. I even would say, if you decide to use a voice of someone, you shouldn't be allowed to mention their name, as this could be false advertising and/or impersonation. I do the same with AI art, I remove any name prompts - I do not like using someone's name. If I care so much about an art style, I create a Lora and name it something differently.

I also mix and match it, so it is never from one person.

[–]Saerain 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Intellectual property shouldn't be a thing.

[–]ShinobiOnestrike 6 points7 points  (4 children)

Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Sean Connery's estate better watch out

[–]smackson 2 points3 points  (2 children)

Morgan Freeman

[–]ShinobiOnestrike 2 points3 points  (1 child)

James Earl Jones

[–]shalomslalom 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Already licensed for Disney

[–]ExperimentalGoat 1 point2 points  (0 children)

David Attenborough

[–]ajahiljaasillalla 8 points9 points  (0 children)

"It’s a f***ing weird time to be alive."

It is like living in a two dimensional coordinate system and walking towards the point zero on the road called f(x) = 1/x

[–]pixartist 9 points10 points  (2 children)

At the same time he probably does not see any issues with GitHub using all of the Devs work to train AI as long as it makes his iPhone work better or cheaper. And all the services running on it are also based on open source software. The same principles that have made software affordable for everyone will take hold in other industries now and I for one like it. If you want money, you should not rely on royalties. Make a standup show, get paid for actual work like the rest of us.

[–]nodating 8 points9 points  (2 children)

This Hollywood-centric narrative when it comes to using AI in arts needs to stop.

I could not care less about actors making gazillions of dollars being replaced by something cheaper. So they will buy one less jet-ski, one less private jet. Just adapt as any other human being, world keeps changing all the time.

If that means that visiting cinema won't be a $50 waste of time but only $5, that is also fine with me. Still a rip-off, but less blatant.

[–]kkyonko 0 points1 point  (1 child)

And what about all the regular voice actors that don't get paid millions?

[–]AdditionalSuccotash 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Their jobs may just not exist in future generations. Unfortunate, but there are plenty of media jobs that have either gone extinct or become niche with new technologies.

[–]ThMogget 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sweet so now I just need an audiobooks app that change all narrators to Stephen Fry. And my car navigation to Morgan Freeman.

[–]meh1434 6 points7 points  (0 children)

This has to stop!

the other day someone took a picture of me and has stolen my soul.

[–]Dron007 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I just watched a video on the same topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rszvQhmvjMM&t=1s
"How Alena Andronova's voice was stolen and began to be used in 18+ videos. This story tells about situations when, without the knowledge of the announcer, her voice appears in projects for which she did not sign up. Not only announcers are in danger. The voices of public and ordinary people are already used in fraudulent schemes."

[–]Prestigious_Ebb_1767 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Lord someone please put a new voice to the game of thrones audiobooks. The phlegmy 99 yr old narrator makes the whole cast sound like pirates.

[–]AlexKingstonsGigolo 15 points16 points  (11 children)

Is it "stealing" if I do a spot-on impersonation? If not, what is the objection to AI doing it?

[–]devinquest 13 points14 points  (1 child)

It's stealing if you claim that your impersonation is the real thing. By all means get the AI to do the perfect Stephen Fry voice for your next movie, but don't claim that it was actually him.

[–]Sudden-Musician9897 5 points6 points  (0 children)

So as long as you don't say it's Stephen Fry it's fine. Personally if a voice sounds good, I don't care who's the one producing. I look forward to commodity level actors and voices

[–]stegd 5 points6 points  (1 child)

The difference I see here is that with voice cloning you can basically scale this infinitely. You can generate as much audio as you want in short amount of time. Impersonators can't do that as they only have 24 hours in a day.

[–]R33v3n 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The difference I see here is that with voice cloning you can basically scale this infinitely. You can generate as much audio as you want in short amount of time.

What if we voice clone the impersonator, then?

[–]NanditoPapa 10 points11 points  (3 children)

YouTube, and plenty of websites, are full of actors and comedians doing impersonations. Sometimes they do impersonations as standup routines. For money. But that's OK for some reason...

[–]namitynamenamey 0 points1 point  (2 children)

...because it's parody? Parody and education get a lot of legal protections, they are not good examples at all.

[–]NanditoPapa 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Great! Then an educational, non-profit video like the one Fry is complaining about should be protected and no problem!

[–]Eleganos 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Some impersonation voices are parody, others are genuine attempts to replicate the vocal talent of the person they're doing an impression of.

In other terms, an Elvis or Bruce Lee Impersonator isn't doing parody, because literally their wole thing is 1-1copying the original and playing it all straight (cause the original is dead and, hence, unavailable)

[–]kkpappas 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I can photorealistically paint a naked woman I saw from my photorealistic memory but I can’t take a photo of that woman?

[–]az226 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Fake money that’s clearly Hollywood money is ok. Fake money passed off as real money is fraud.

[–]joecunningham85 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Ar e you re threaded.

[–]UsernameSuggestion9 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've been listening to David Attenborough talk about 40K for months now.

[–]Express-Set-8843 1 point2 points  (0 children)

David Attenborough is narrating everything on YouTube right now.

[–]Current-Direction-97[🍰] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Maybe this just means what could be owned and controlled has changed forever.

[–]StaticNocturne▪️ASI 2022[🍰] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'd like to use Stephen Fry's voice in my personal AI

But I'd be willing to pay for it, although I know he doesn't care about money as much as the principle of thieving

[–]moxxon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Speaking at a news conference as the strike was announced, union president Fran Drescher said AI “poses an existential threat” to creative industries, and said actors needed protection from having “their identity and talent exploited without consent and pay.”

Yes .. the buggy whip manufacturers made a similar claim.

[–]superfluousbitches 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Warning who? Lmao

[–]cute_ninja_empire 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's been possible for about 5 years now

[–]bitRAKE 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Like stable diffusion can create images, there will be a voice model that can create voices - it's only a matter of time. "sultry female with a American southern twang and a lisp".

[–]ptitrainvaloin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Exactly, soon it will be possible to create and adjust voices from memory alone with such next gen tools, not even need to clone them or have the data sources for voices.

[–]AdvocateReason -1 points0 points  (2 children)

I know it's a minority opinion but so long as all the dataset was paid for then it's not "stolen".
AIs can be capable minds that are very good at doing impressions and will only get better.

[–]kkpappas 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Someone is capable of photorealistically painting everything they see and showcase that painting and yet we cant take photos of everything you see and publish them. The laws are made around human limitations and when a technology disrupts that then we regulate that technology.

[–]Creepy-Tie-4775 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, but AI image generators don't just kick out copies of photos, or even chop photos up and piece new ones together. Just like a person, they emulate the style to create something new, but similar.

Like the difference between someone studying Shakespeare's collective works and then writing a poem that sounds like it could have been written by Shakespeare versus copying and pasting a bunch of Shakespearean quotes together.

[–]unlikely-contender 1 point2 points  (0 children)

His image was also stolen and replicated by many websites. So what?

When I was a kid there was this story of "stupid tribes people who believed that photography would take away their soul" or something like that. Are we doing that again now?

[–]-DethLok- 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Because amongst the 8 billion or so people on the planet, there is no-one who sounds like Stephen Fry who could be sampled to 'imitate' Stephen Fry?

I mean, sure, it's far more likely that his voice from his countless appearances was sampled, but that doesn't mean that it's true.

What would happen, I wonder, if the business promoting a voice that 'sounds like Stephen Fry' was able to produce the person they used, with audio and video and software evidence of how they made that person's voice sound more like Stephen Fry than Stephen Fry does?

[–]theweekinai -1 points0 points  (3 children)

As AI technology advances, it's essential to establish clear guidelines and protections for voice actors and their unique contributions. This issue highlights the evolving challenges posed by AI in various creative industries.

[–]Sudden-Musician9897 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Maybe if it can be easily recreated by AI, it's not that unique of a contribution? As a consumer I support cheaper audiobooks. This is like accountants fighting against excel. Adapt or die

[–]theweekinai -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I agree it's important to recognize that AI can't fully replicate the unique contributions of voice actors. They bring emotion and human interpretation that enhances storytelling. Like accountants using Excel, they can adapt to work alongside AI, improving the creative process.

[–]Longjumping_Tale_111 -2 points-1 points  (1 child)

Get snatched

[–]JoanaJoestrela -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

snatched ya weave

[–]WorrierForLife -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

AI is crazy

[–]Cosmic_Surgery 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've read that article with his voice in my head

[–]imnos 0 points1 point  (2 children)

So what if I, as an impersonator, did an audio book narration in my version of Stephen Fry's voice, and what if I was so good at impersonating, you couldn't tell the difference? Would he say I've stolen his voice?

[–]BluBoi236 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Technically? Yes.

Lawfully? I don't really know or care.

[–]Creepy-Tie-4775 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Depends on whether or not you try to claim it is his voice, implicitly or explicitly. At least I think that's the threshold.

[–]BS_Radar0 0 points1 point  (0 children)

And with iOS 17, you can make a clone of your own voice in 10 mins...!

[–]bishopuniverse 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How do we know he said that?

[–]Creepy-Tie-4775 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Suddenly I want to clone John Cleese's voice, feed an LLM a couple of Monty Python sketches, and have a nice long argument with him.

[–]icecreamgallon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

some jaded voice actor somewhere gave this article a smirk i bet

[–]lobabobloblaw 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes. This is the immediate reality that all performers must be aware of.

That said—on account of his celebrity, shouldn’t he have the legal means to track the person who was technically responsible down?

[–]ziplock9000 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We've known this for months. He's behind the curve.

[–]QuantumAIMLYOLO 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Probably eleven labs right